Screen Door on the Pantry

Just because you live in a new construction, subdivision, cookie cutter, house doesn’t mean you can’t add little individual touches to help your home reflect your personal style.

One of my favorite sound memories is that of the screen door thwacking closed during the summers at my grandparents’ house. The door was painted bright red, and it had a squeaky spring on it with one of those metal grates on the bottom half to keep us kids from busting the screen out.

I am in LOVE with vintage farmhouse style; and that is SO not the kind of house I live in. Even before Pinterest, back in the dark ages when we actually slept at night instead of surfed and pinned, I tore pictures out of magazines to put in my inspiration notebook. Now there are images everywhere to help fill in your vision…especially when you’re trying to explain to your sweetie and he says “you wanna do what?!”. Here are a few I found lickety split on Google.

We told our builder from the get go that we wanted to put a screen door in our pantry. I’m sure he thought we were completely nuts. We had hoped we could just do this from the beginning. It got to be such a snaggly mess we just finally said forget it, we’ll do it ourselves.

It ended up being a fairly simple switch-a-roo, once we got the door.

This is how the pantry looked originally.

I had hoped to be able to use a standard (inexpensive) screen door from Lowe’s or Home Depot. Unfortunately, the door frame opening size was too small for a standard screen door. Ours is only 26″ wide. Then I thought that maybe we could find a vintage one or even make one. Well, at the time we just had too much going on. I found a local, small town, lumber yard that would custom make one for me – any size for a fairly reasonable price. So I went for it. They made it, then I painted and distressed it just a little bit. I used my favorite black color by Behr called Black Suede. (This is the BEST black you will ever find). After it was painted I sanded down the corners and the spot where your hand would rub behind the handle, just a little bit. Then I rubbed on some Min Wax stain in Cherry where the nekked wood was.

In the picture below the door was all taped off for painting and I had marked it thinking the builder might hang it for us. As previously mentioned he was a little flummoxed by the screen door on the pantry concept.

So, we just hung it ourselves using the existing door hinges. My sweetie measured and marked where the hinges would go.

He then carefully cut around the markings with an sharp blade.

Next up he chiseled out the spaces where the hinges would go, so they would be recessed.

I know there are special hinge recess tools out there – we just don’t have one. And since we’re not in the habit of making doors on a regular basis..we don’t really need one. The old fashioned approach worked perfectly.

Here it is all hung up with it’s markings still on.

Tadaaaah! This is what it looks like today.

Yep I love it! No, it’s not for everyone – but it’s just right for me! For the handle we just used a plain old gate handle in a black finish.

I usually leave the light on in the pantry so the space is kind of like a perpetual night light in the dark little hallway.

With the light on (and even with it off) you CAN see into the pantry. Fortunately, I keep it pretty tidy in there. One thing I would eventually like to change though…the wire shelving (blech). I would, one day, like to switch the wire shelving to solid wood shelves. One day… For now it’s just right. It even has a squeaky spring and goes thwack when it shuts.

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**I have received no compensation financial or otherwise for mention of specific products in this post.

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About Me

About Me:Hi! Welcome to Embraceable Life. I’m so glad you’re here! My name is Kitty. I am a Southern gal, through and through. I love everything about home life: cooking, decorating, crafting, gardening, & keeping up with my Air Force husband and two active (young adult) kids. I hope you’ll be able to find things here that inspire you and warm your heart. I look forward to showing you all sorts of tips I have for decorating on a budget, yummy recipes, foolproof gardening, & DIY projects that anyone can do. I will also share some of my “just plain ole” favorite things as well as bring you along on special field trips I take.Thanks for stopping by!